Michelle Lynne 123
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: [00:00:00]
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the design for the creative mind podcast. I am excited to introduce you today to Jamie Van Kike, the owner and lead [00:01:00] strategist of growing your team. She helps women, small business owners become confident leaders who hires correctly every single time. And Jamie, that's a lot.
Thank you for being here. I want to hear all about this.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: Yes, thank you so much for having me today.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: Oh my gosh. So how did you get involved in this kind of business and what is it that you do to navigate this promise?
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: Yeah, so my path to get here was a winding path. The short story of it, I left my corporate job because I knew I always wanted to run my own business and finally said, okay, this is it. Jumped in to start a software development company with my husband and I hated it. I was miserable day in and day out.
I learned as much as I love technology being on that side of it was not for me. So I was like, okay, I need to figure out something else. During that time, I was consulting for the company that I left and realized that I loved leadership consulting. I [00:02:00] loved helping people, uh, gain these skills that they never had to have before because they never had to do those things before.
Like, so I worked a lot with first time managers. So I was like, I love this. I'm gonna start a business doing some sort of leadership consulting. And I was like, but what exactly do I go out and pitch? What exactly should my packages be? Because at that point in time, my, my audience, I said, was going to be corporate companies.
So I was like, all right, let me go out and figure this out. So I had a member to the chamber. So I went to a lot of chamber events and just was like, let me start talking to two people. Kept finding myself speaking to small business owners over and over again, not the corporate people that were there, the small business owners.
And I was like, well, let me do some market research here too. Let me find out what their struggles are. Cause I'm sure in some ways they're the same. And what kept coming up over and over and again was hiring. And they're like, can you help me? Hiring is a leadership skill. And I'm just like, yeah, no, my clients are going to be corporate clients.
You're small businesses. It's not necessarily exactly the same, but I will find you someone. I [00:03:00] will find you someone that can teach you how to hire from your first employee up, and I could find nobody to connect them with. There were people out there that said I help small businesses with hiring, but once you look into who their idea candidate was.
They meant companies that already had 50 employees and they were gonna be like their outsourced HR department.
And I was like, okay, well you can't get to 50 employees if you screw up with your first view. So I was like, that's not it. Or other people would, they would build hiring maybe in a part of their bigger consulting and coaching frameworks, but you had to be a part of their whole consulting and coaching framework in order to get that hiring expertise.
So it was like there is nothing that's that standalone hiring help for small businesses. And so I thought about a lot of my backgrounds when I was in corporate and I realized that while I wasn't in HR, I had a lot of hiring experience. I worked for a international marketing company. And my team members were mostly entry level, but, and they were [00:04:00] constantly getting poached to go elsewhere in the organization.
So I was always hiring. So I was like, I know what it's like to be in that hiring cycle. I've done it a lot. And my peer managers, it was the same for them. They were always in that hiring cycle, but they didn't always have the time. to go and do those interviews. So I was like, I got you. I'm doing interviews anyway.
I'll just let you know if I find someone that's good for your team. What I realized quickly was who was going to be successful on my team with my management style, the clients we worked with, the other teams internally we worked with was going to be different than someone that was on their team. Even though our team members did the exact same thing, those differences mattered.
So I learned how to get into the nuances throughout the process to figure out. Who's successful? So it's like, I have all this knowledge. I worked with HR teams in the past through hiring projects. I was like, I'm going to do it. I'm going to be helping small business owners with the hiring process. I'm going to teach them how to do it.
I'm going to teach them to be successful so they don't have to learn through trial and error. And now it's been at this time, five and a half years that since growing your [00:05:00] team's been born.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: Wow. So it was just a natural progression, which it sounds like it was right in front of you, but you didn't see it until people kept asking for it.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: Right? Yeah, exactly. If you ask me, they're like, what, what's your business going to be like, you know, once you leave corporate, I would have never ever in a million years told you that I was going to be helping small businesses hiring, but it just happens. And, and I love it.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: Oh my gosh. And it's so valuable because when it is a small business, every hire is a key employee.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: Right.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: It's not like they're secondary or anything along that line. So you know, one of the things that I've heard and having experience hiring as well, let's, let's talk about hiring for passion over skill. I
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: Yes.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: think it's like, that's really cool, but like what direction should you go in real life?
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: Yes. So it's one of those interesting things. I think a lot of people will say [00:06:00] hire for passion because you can always teach skill or you can get them in the right seat later. And I was like, that works well for corporate companies. where there's lots of seats and lots of opportunities. You always hear the phrase, get them on the bus and you can figure out where they go later.
That doesn't work in small businesses because we might have only one open seat on that bus and that we might not even be on a bus. We might be in a convertible where there is only two seats. So there's no place else for this person to go. So I say you have to hire for skill first because you're hiring because you have a specific need and that person needs to be able to fulfill that specific need.
However, Because it's a small business, you can't ignore the passion. You can't ignore the connection. So you need to make sure that you can also get along with that person. That that person matches your management style, your culture, and everything else. So personality matters, but when we walk our clients through the hiring process, it's skill first, then passion.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: Gotcha. [00:07:00] Gotcha. So you need to be able to define the role that you're hiring for and not just find a cool person and back them into it.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: Right, exactly. Yeah, because chances are you're hiring because you don't have a whole lot of time, and if you don't have a whole lot of time, you don't have a whole lot of time to train them from the ground up. You can still help them improve their skills and grow over time, but they need to be able to do the basic things that you're hiring them for.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: That makes sense. And so how do you know when to hire?
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: Yes. So I always love this question because I feel like it's one of those things we get so busy in our business just going through the day to day going through the motions that a lot of times we think about hiring way too late. So I always say we should do a review of our business, at least once a quarter to see if there's the signs that it's time to hire.
Probably once a month would be better, but I know we're busy, so at least once a quarter. Stop, reflect through your business, see if you have one of these four signs. And those four signs are, one, you're [00:08:00] saying no to your idea client. So there's projects that you want to take out on, that you would love to take on, but you're having to say no to them. This could also mean you have a waitlist. And in businesses, waitlists can either work for you, or against you. So sometimes they work for you because you can increase your prices. It creates that demand. It creates that, that thing of like, I am an in demands business. And if you want to work with me, you're going to have to wait.
And I know that if you want to work with me, you are going to wait for me. But then there's other people in business that it's like, I can't take on their business today, which means that business is going to go someplace else. Or you realize that. You're kind of at a ceiling for what you offer right now in terms of price.
You don't have the ability to really increase your price and, and things like that. The only way to increase your revenue is to bring in more business, but you can't because you're stuck and you're saying no, because you're really at capacity.
That's sign number one. You're saying no. Sign number two is you're losing customers due to your poor customer service.
Or your [00:09:00] customers, even if they take it through the end of the project, they're not as happy as they once were. So you're not getting those glowing reviews where people feel like they're just one of your hundred clients versus feeling like they're that special client. So, and this is typically because you're not responding to them as quickly as you used to.
You tell them that you're going to have deliverables to them on Tuesday. And instead of Tuesday, you're always delivering them on Thursday morning with an apology of, Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry that I got, I got sucked into this and I couldn't get it to you, or I need one more day. So you're finding yourself always late and behind, and you're not meeting those expectations of your customers.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: that's a good one. Yeah.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: and sometimes this kind of goes back, as we talked about that wait list, that, that poor customer service can also go into people are inquiring about your business.
By the time you have that initial conversation, by the time you get back to them or anything like that, they've already gone someplace else.
So they're saying, I went with the person that can call, that called me back sooner. Like I've already made my decision because I [00:10:00] didn't know who to, who to go with. So I contacted three companies the same day. So you realize that because of your response time, you're losing out on business or your customers are no longer happy.
Sign number three is you want to do something new within your business, but you can't do it. So maybe you want to open up in a new market. Maybe you want to start a podcast. Maybe you want to, you have the thing that you do that these customers hire you for, but now you want to teach other people how to do this as well.
So you have that additional income stream or whatever it is for your business, but you can't do it because you're. Time is stuck with what you currently offer and currently do. And maybe you're not fully at capacity there, but it's keeping you busy enough that you can't switch to add something new to your business.
And then sign number four is that you lack skill or knowledge that is needed within your business. So early on in our businesses, we need to learn pretty much everything because we're doing everything. There's so much that you realize that you don't know. You reach a point in your business where you no longer need to learn how to do [00:11:00] everything.
You no longer should be doing everything yourself, and it's more cost effective to hire someone else to do it, even if it's for a one off thing. If you think about it, let's just look at something simple like, you know, home projects that you're doing yourself. Some simple things with plumbing, you can get it done and do it yourself.
Okay, I just gotta tighten this here, I'm gonna change out this fixture, great. There's other things. where you're going to get yourself in a whole load of trouble if you go and do it. And yeah, you can watch YouTube tutorials and you could do all these things, but the time it's going to take you to do it and the chances of something going wrong, it's more cost effective to hire that expert to come in and do it for
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: Absolutely. That makes perfect sense. So those four things are fantastic and , I can picture and I can feel, you know, when I've experienced those myself, but so is there ever a time where it's like too early or too late, so, you know, when you need to hire, but. I think I'm going to get there in a couple of months and this person sitting right in front of me now, should I hire her or
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: Yeah, [00:12:00] so too early, there are those things where you can potentially hire too early and some of those things are going to be that you don't really have the resources to hire at the level that you're going that you're going to hire for. So, Even if you don't necessarily have the projects and stuff yet, but you can afford it in your budget, that's not necessarily that it's too early.
It's when you really don't have the budget yet to afford that team member. And one of the things, the way I see it work here is you go and hire someone full time when really all you need is somebody part time. But a lot of times, because we used to be full time employees for someone else, we think employment is full time.
We think great talent is full time talent. We fail to think that. Oh, I can get good talent in a part time capacity. So instead of getting someone for 40 hours a week, I'm getting someone for 20 hours a week or 10 hours a week, or even five hours a week. Or we could have hired a contractor versus hiring an employee.
So that way, if , this task ebbs and flows. We have that person when we need them. When we don't have that work, , we don't have to have them. So [00:13:00] those, that's some of the things when you hire too early, because you hire too big or too expensive for what your business can actually sustain. The hiring too late, this happens a lot because we're afraid to delegate.
We're afraid to hand over the reins. We then think about, I don't want to pay for something I can't afford, so I'm going to wait to make sure I absolutely can afford it. If you're waiting for that, chances are you're never going to get to that spot because you're always going to be in that mindset of, I can't afford it yet.
But when you hire too late, typically you're drowning. And when you're drowning in your work, it then also results in when are you going to have time to onboard this person? Because even if they're good at what they do, they're excellent. They've been doing this for years for another company. They've never done it for your company.
They don't know. your processes, your expectations, the way you work with your clients. They don't know where you are in the middle of these. And they're just kind of like thrown into the deep end of the pool and told to start swimming. And they're like, okay, but, but which way, where do I go? So part of it is when you hire too late, you don't have the [00:14:00] capacity to take that person from being that new hire to a great team member.
So even if they have the potential, you can't lead them there.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: Yeah, I have been so guilty of that. Just waiting until you're buried and you can barely see the light and you're expecting them to hit the ground running. It sets up an unusual dynamic as well
because , they don't onboard and there's never that full connection. Or if there is, it's like three, four, six months later, Oh, this is what I'm supposed to be doing.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: and it's one of those things that's like onboarding is a forgotten part of the hiring process because we think that hiring really ends when we present them that offer letter, they say yes, and then they show up on day one. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, that person isn't really a full employee for you until they go through the onboarding process.
So you need to get them to that point. And studies have shown that companies with good onboarding processes. retain their employees at a [00:15:00] higher rate. Because if you don't have good onboarding, people don't feel connected to your organization. They feel like they were thrown into the deep end.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: absolutely. So let's talk about that because a lot of the audience is going to be maybe solopreneurs, maybe individuals who never actually worked in corporate. So like define onboarding for a. Small business.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: Yeah, so onboarding, yeah, onboarding, simply put, and then we'll dive a little deeper into it, it's the process of taking someone from day one, brand new, to being able to fully do their job and understanding how their job works in the organization. No more training wheels, no more nothing, they're fully in, being able to meet every expectation of their job.
So, in a small business, this typically, takes a little bit more time than people expect because you've been doing the work and you need to trust yourself to delegate it to somebody else. So we always say, Onboarding is like a stair step approach. A lot of times, the [00:16:00] simplest way to break it down is you do it, they watch.
You guys do it together. They do it, you watch. Now they're doing it on their own and you're checking it every once in a while. Now they're completely on their own. And depending on the task and depending on everything, that might look a little bit different. Sometimes that moves really quickly. You can get through all those steps in one day.
Other times with other things, it's gonna take a few weeks to get there. Onboarding is then also remembering that people don't drink from fire hoses because it's way too much at once. So how do you train them on things in a manner where they absorb, and you also have the ability to teach? Because let's just say we're bringing someone in full time.
So they're working 40 hours a week. Chances are you don't have 40 hours to train someone that first week. You might actually only have 10 hours to sit with that team member on that first week. So you have to understand. If you only have 10 hours of training time, they might not be able to do every function of their job at the end of that first week, because they need more training time.
So what can they do that then they can do some things [00:17:00] of value for your organization, or they can take that and learn more on their own, where then you teach them the next piece of their job. And then the next piece, and then the next piece. So it's not day one you teach them all aspects of their job, it's what are those building blocks.
So if you think of it like Legos, how do you put it together to eventually get to this finished project? Versus just throwing all the Legos together and being like, hopefully they land in the right place.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: Yeah. And not under your bare foot.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: Right.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: Okay, so when you're going through that, Or what sort of questions can you ask when you're hiring to know if this person's going to be, let's just say amenable to working with a small business or just in general , because the onboarding is not going to be as smooth in a small business as it is, well, hypothetically in a corporate role.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: Yes. Yeah. So the thing about it is you really need to pull out from that person things like what's their learning style. Like, how do they interact with others? [00:18:00] How a lot of things, what people want in a small businesses is someone who's a self leader, which I'll just give you a little spoiler there. Most self leaders are created because the manager allows them to be a self leader, not because someone really has necessarily the skills, but there are some people that are more driven.
To begin with, so we kind of, we change, even though a lot of times you'll use the term self leader, we look at what exactly do you need? We look at their motivation, what drives them. Are they the person who thinks five steps ahead or are they the reactive person? So you want to pull out a lot of their work style.
How, how have they performed in the past to see how they can function? in the future. And so you ask questions that really say, tell me about a time when. Give me an example of. So we might ask a question to figure out their learning style. Tell me about the last piece of software that you had to learn for your job.
That maybe you struggled with at first and then so they'll tell us about that. [00:19:00] And then maybe we ask some follow up questions around it. Okay, well, what did you do when you came to a roadblock and you didn't understand what to do next things like that. So we could see, are they the type of person that's going to go out and.
Search online and find videos or tutorials or anything to get the answer. Are they the type of person that says, well, the first thing I do when I hit a roadblock is I go to my manager for a response. And you're sitting there like, but I don't have time. I don't have time. Or maybe I'm not an expert in the software, so I don't want them coming to me because I can't answer their questions.
Like, I need someone who's going to be able to do more than me. So you can listen to some of those things to say, does this fit what I need? Is this someone that's going to do things the way that I'm going to be like, yes, I'm so happy they handled things that way? Or are they going to do things in a way where you're just like, No, like that doesn't work.
And like, you could be the type of person that says, I want someone to come to me with their questions, because I can answer their question like this, but if they're going to go and search Google for the answer, search YouTube, they might spend two hours trying to find [00:20:00] an answer on their own, when it could have been done in five minutes.
So it's like, knowing what you want, what you're looking for, and then asking the questions to uncover, is this what I'm looking for?
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1:
You break it down so succinctly , and I'm thinking back to people that I've hired and I'm going way back, like way back and I'm like, Oh, that would have been a really good question to ask that person.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: Yeah, So
yeah, when we're working with our clients, like, we create interview guides, and the interview guides, every question on there is tied back to something our clients told us was important about their idea candidate,
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: So is that how you go about your business? You interview me, per se, before you start interviewing others,
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: Yeah. So we take every one of our clients, no matter what the package is, what we call our hiring kickoff call, or I ask a series of questions to really uncover who your idea candidate is. Because a lot of people are like, I need someone who could do these tasks. Great. Well, what does that mean in your business?
What does success mean? What are those things where you're like, this is make or [00:21:00] break? What are those things? You're like, well, this would be nice to have, but I don't care. Like if everyone has X, maybe I can train on it. Or maybe it's just the icing on the cake. But the cake's still going to be delicious without that skill.
Yeah. So we really dive into a whole bunch of questions and then everything that's created and everything we go through after that ties back to that idea candidate that we pull out during that conversation. So as I was saying, we, one of the things we do is create, we create the interview guides, every question ties back to, to something that.
You told me about your idea candidate, and what we do in additional is with majority of the questions, not every every question because some of them are pretty straightforward. We include, why are we asking these questions so it's like right there in the guide where like we are asking this question because your idea candidates.
XYZ because you want XYZ. So when our clients are going through it, or even when we're doing full service recruiting on behalf of our clients, and we're doing the interviews, it's that reminder of here's what we're looking for to help distinguish [00:22:00] between that was a great sounding answer. And that was what I need.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: interesting. And so that makes sense because oftentimes you'll hear a great answer and be impressed by it. But if it's not what you need. It can lead you in the wrong direction with that particular hire.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: Yes.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: Hmm. Yeah, that's, I think I did that when I was dating. Well, he sounds really smart. So, um, so with
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: It's funny. I just watched a movie last night that was around that with one of their friends being like, all right, do you like this person? Because they're actually on the right person or it's because the, it's the person that you keep saying that you need.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: or they keep telling you that they need them. You need them or something like that. So, yeah, it's, it's reading between the lines and hearing what you need, not necessarily just what you want or think
you want. So, well, with that, how can you ensure somebody's the right person to hire before they even complete any work?
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: Yeah. So it's really [00:23:00] about that interview. It's about asking the right questions and knowing who your idea candidate is. So when you really figure out who is your idea candidate, Asking those questions, and one of the things we say is so important, one of the questions we always take through is what does success look like for this role?
This is what we ask our clients when we're going to create those interview questions, because you need to know what it means for someone to be successful. So that way you can say, is this the right person, is it not? Uh, we do work with a lot of clients when we're going through the process that they become very hesitant on making that offer.
And a lot of times it's because they've been burned by people in the past. They're like, I hired this person. I thought they were great. They didn't work out. So then we'll say, okay, well, why don't you think this person's going to work out? And then we'll say they'll say X, Y, Z. And I was like, but we asked about that we were able to dive in.
They were able to give examples there. So we really want to make sure, like, as I said before, that we ask questions that uncover what they've actually done in the past. Because as they say, past [00:24:00] behavior is the best indicator of future performance. And it doesn't necessarily mean that person needs to have done the exact same role before.
There's a lot of times we're looking for transferrable skills. There's a lot of times when we're hiring in small businesses that the role we're hiring for is never going to look exactly like the role that they've done. It could be 75 percent the same, but that 25 percent is going to be really different.
But that 25 percent to us is still really important. So we look for a lot of transferrable skills, which means the situations that they're going to get in, they might never have done those exact same situations. But we can look at how did you handle this? How did you handle things when everything's gone wrong and a customer's upset?
How did you handle things or tell me about like times when you had to uncover or really pay attention to the details, that those details mattered and you were able to catch a mistake because you were looking at those details. So we think about what do they really need to do skill wise, not necessarily task wise.
Skill wise and ask those questions so we might not [00:25:00] say you've been in this exact scenario with our clients. Just like this. Tell me about it. It's we're looking at things. Do they know how to calm down and upset customer? Do they know how to, if it's really important, pay attention to the details? Do they know how to actually be a project manager versus being told everything to do so once we're really able to say what have they done in the past?
We can look at that to say, okay, they should be able to do this in the future.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: That makes sense. And they've got a strong foundation on which to build upon. Well, wow. I, it, the way, the way you go about this has got to be such a huge benefit for small business owners. I mean, the impact that you have. I, and I, and I, and I see this coming from having my own small business and then having worked in corporate.
I think the impact that you have Jamie is huge because small business owners, one probably don't have the level of expertise that you're bringing, obviously, I mean, that's why you're [00:26:00] hired, but also because it's such a huge component. In a small business to have the right person or to have the wrong person.
Like when you have the wrong person, like that's painful because they're sitting right next to you every single day.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: Yes, it is. It's super painful. And one of the things that we see is because they view hiring typically as a stressful, challenging thing, small businesses will keep that wrong person way longer than we should. And so we always ask the question, are your employees worth their paycheck? If not, You need to figure out how to get them to be worth their paycheck.
So either it's that coaching, that mentoring, it's doing those things there. Or if you determine, nope, there's nothing I can do to make them worth their paycheck. You need to let them go and get someone else into that role. Yes. Hiring takes time, but when you're, when you have that right plan and strategy for hiring and you have the knowledge and the know how how to do it, it goes so much smoother.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: And I think that when you hold on to somebody that's not the right fit, not only are you doing [00:27:00] yourself a disservice, but you're doing them a disservice more often than not. They know they're not the right fit. They're just collecting a paycheck, but
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: and if you, if you think about it, well, everyone has their own things that motivate them, and typically, like, how they want to receive motivation, a lot of that is still all tied to, they're doing well, they just want to be recognized in these manners for doing well. Nobody is out there wanting to do horrible at their job.
No one is out there wanting their boss to be mad at them day in and day out. No one is out there wanting to get that negative feedback constantly.
It doesn't feel good. And sometimes you'll have those employees that will say, okay, it's not right for me. And they'll leave. And other times you'll have those employees that just.
because of their personality, because of their drive. They're like, I'm going to keep trying. I'm going to try every day. I want to please you. I want to please you so much. I'm going to keep trying. And it's not good for them because they're never going to be able to please you. And it's not good for you because then [00:28:00] you're spending all this extra time either with them or thinking about them or cleaning up their mess.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And I was listening to gosh, I don't know. It was a podcast. I don't even know with whom or when, but it was probably within the last six months or so, but she said something that really resonated with me is that sometimes your employees are the right employees for a season, but sometimes you outgrow them and that's okay.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: Yes.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: I've like, I've recently just really kind of let that settle and say, okay, well, that person did a great job for the season that I needed. And now it's time to part ways, but not because either one of us are doing like, are, are doing wrong.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: Yeah, yeah, it's exactly like I talk about that with my clients all the time. I've talked about it on my podcast. So maybe, uh,
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: Yeah. maybe maybe it was,
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: Um, but who knows? And if it was someone else, great. I'm glad people are talking about that too, because so often [00:29:00] we think about retention. I want this person to stay long run for the long haul.
I want this person to grow with my business. I, when I bring someone in, I want them still here three years, five years, 10 years from now. And those are great goals, but it doesn't always work out that way. And sometimes we find ourselves holding on to our team members for too long, but our business has outgrown them and where they want to go next and where our business wants to go next don't match.
And when that happens, we really need to say, okay, this was good while it lasted.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: Mm hmm.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: But we're just no longer fit anymore. If you think about it, like if you have kids, sometimes they're playing on a specific sports team or they have a specific coach and things like that. And their skillset grows at a different level than what that coach is able to coach for.
So you need to move up to that next level coach. You need to, you can't keep them with that level one coach that they should really at level two and things like that. So there comes a time where you need to make that transition, no matter how much you love that first coach. And it's just like with your team members, no matter how much you love the team [00:30:00] member, there's sometimes.
comes a point where you have to transition. And that's perfectly okay. My very first employee here at Growing Your Team, we reached a point where I needed someone more than what she could do hours wise. She started out with me 10 hours a week. I needed someone 20 hours. She couldn't give me 20 hours. And at first I was like, all right, well, I'm going to split the role into two roles.
And I would have two people working 10 hours a week. And then I really realized that. I was doing that because I really liked her,
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: Mm
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: but there wasn't a good way to split that role into two people. It really needed to be one person. And I had to make the decision that I couldn't keep her. If she couldn't give me 20 hours, I needed to find someone new.
Luckily, it ended up coming at the exact same time where I'm getting ready to have that conversation with her. She's getting ready that she found a new full time opportunity because she was working for me on the side. And she goes with my new job, I'm not even going to have 10 hours a week to give. I'm going to have to be 100 percent dedicated to my full time job.
And [00:31:00] I'm like, great. So we got to part ways perfectly at the same time for both of
us. But it was still like having to make that decision. I love this employee, but they're not right for my next season.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: And I love that because what I've learned within the past six ish months or so, as a small business owner,, sometimes we make decisions that are best for our employees and not necessarily for the company. And when I, when I recognized that, I was like, Oh, I made this decision for her.
There's, you know what, if you may, if you do that too often, there's not going to be a company to make a decision for. So making, making business decisions with our company first, not our people first sounds uncomfortable, but it's really, you're putting your people first because if you don't have a company, you don't have people.
That's
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: So it's that thing. It's like, we're humans. We have emotions. We, we don't want to. have to [00:32:00] lay people off. We don't want to tell people that their jobs are changing for anything that could be perceived as a negative thing. So we think about what can I do for this? And it's like, you're absolutely right.
You are a business owner first leader seconds when you're coming to those decisions. So how do you make the right decisions for your business? Now, how do you communicate those decisions to your people? To give an example of just kind of like on the on the personal side that might help this sink in for for some people.
So when I was making that decision to leave my corporate job all those years ago. I remember talking to my husband one night. I was like, I just want to let you know what I'm thinking about because like, as I said, I left my job to start a software development company with my husband. My background was not in software.
I was going to quit my job and learn how to program so I would have enough knowledge and could help get things up off the ground. It's a big jump, but I sat there and said, I just want to let you know that I'm thinking about this, but I don't want your opinion yet because I need to make sure that I'm making the right decision for me, and then we can figure out if it's the right decision for the [00:33:00] family.
But I need to make it independently for me first, and then we'll fit the rest of the people in and if it turns out it's not right for the family. We'll talk about, okay, why, and is there things we need to do? Do we need to increase our savings or things like that to make it right for the family? But I need to focus, I need to isolate at first and focus on, is this right for me?
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: That's really good. I think that's really, I think that's a great statement to leave our, leave our audience with is that at the end of the day, it's not about our, it's not about our people. And I think as women, that's really a hard pill to swallow because we're such nurturers and we take care of other people.
But we have to be business owners before we are leaders,
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: And you can still be very much about your people. You can still look at that and say, this is the path that my business has to go on, means this role's changing, and give sometimes those people that opportunity to say, I'm willing to invest in [00:34:00] you to get this extra training that you're going to need to go into this if you want to do it.
Or I'm going to have to have you take on these responsibilities in order for you to be able to keep doing what you're doing. Does that work for you? You know, and kind of have those conversations. You don't have to go in and flat out say, these roles are changing. You're out. You can have those conversations
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: you don't have to be Beth Dutton.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: Yeah, you could have the conversations to say, because sometimes it will be there's just no more room for you at the table anymore. This position is being eliminated. I don't have another place for you to go right now, maybe in the future, but let me help you find that next opportunity. I will reach out to my network to see who's hiring.
I will be there for a reference for you. I will keep you on instead of giving like two weeks notice or saying your jobs done today. You can stay on for two months while you're going and looking for that next opportunity. During those two months, if you find the right opportunity and you have to start for them, we can end sooner, but you have two months that you're still on my [00:35:00] payroll where you can be looking for a job.
So there's things you can do that still say, I am people focused, I care about people, but you're putting your business first.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: I love that. And I think it's, it's so true because at the end of the day, the only thing small business owners have is our reputation and it's not just our reputations with our clients, but it's also our internal clients and leaving, leaving them with a good taste in their mouth because Lord knows how many times, you know, it's a small world.
You cross, there's a lot of crossover a lot of times.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: Oh, yes, definitely.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: So, Jamie, , on a more personal note, , I'm curious, when in your day do you think about your business strategy?
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: Ooh, good question. I will honestly admit I don't think it's something that I do every day. Um, but probably I would say at least once a month I'm sitting down there and thinking about that overall business strategy and how that's really going to play out. What I want to be focusing on, what new we should be adding in, what things we should be taking away [00:36:00] in terms of things like marketing.
Does this work? Does this not work? , I do have Sometimes it's those conversations with team members. So, um, I have one team member that I meet with every Monday. So sometimes it's like, we're talking about the tactical, okay, what did you do? What do you need from me? What's up on the plate for this week?
Okay, well, as we're thinking forward of what needs to be done. Here's the goals. Here's the strategy. Here's everything we're working for. Are we still working towards those items? Um, so, it's, it's at least once a week I would say I'm having those conversations. It's probably about once a month that I'm really sitting down and focusing on that strategy.
Are we moving in the right direction? Are we not? And I really learned to do that because I realized, I think it was about a year and a half ago now, I realized that I was following the money instead of creating the business that I wanted, and that I needed to say no to certain things, even though it was good financial opportunities, because it wasn't the business that I wanted.
It wasn't serving clients in [00:37:00] the way that I wanted to serve clients. So from that, I really, I realized that I need to do this a little bit more often. I need to sit down to make sure I'm still moving on the right path for my goals. recognizing that my goals can change as I get more information in front of me, but am I making the conscious decision to change my goals or am I just changing my goals because I'm following money or I'm following something that really isn't right for me in the long run?
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: Mm hmm. Sometimes they're vanities. Egos. So, uh, how do you, how do you bend your job? Do you, what am I trying to say? There's a certain lifestyle, like, do you build your business around the lifestyle that you want? Or is it the other way around? Does your lifestyle kind of follow in the footsteps of your job, of your business?
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: So I would say right now it is kind of the lifestyle first. I think it's been one of those things where [00:38:00] it was, that wasn't always the case. And I felt like I was working all the time and working all the time and going nowhere, like those types of things where you're just like, so I have two little kids.
Um, I, you know, want to make sure that I'm taking the opportunities to spend time with them. So I am very strict now about my business hours and when I'm Available for clients. Occasionally, if it's a client's in need or things like that, I'll meet outside of those business hours. But my business hours are when my girls are at school.
Once they're home, I might work on stuff if they're busy doing homework or like I said, a client needs a meeting and the only time they can meet is 4 30 in the afternoon. And I'm like, okay, we'll do that because I need to make sure I'm serving you.
But yeah, but so it's the exception, not the rule, but it's really having that time.
They come home. I'm mom first. When one of the things that I did, like right now we're recording this, it's Thanksgiving week. My girls are out of school all this entire week. We have the entire week off. This is the only meeting that was pre booked on my calendar
[00:39:00] because the rest of that time, I was like, no, I'll meet with my clients if they need to be met with this week, but no one can schedule time on my calendar without my permission.
So all my scheduling links and stuff are blocked off for this week. That way, I'm in control of it. So that way, we can go out and do something fun, but I'm still here for my clients. I'm still getting that work done. So it's building in, in those things and be very good about just blocking time off. One of the things that I heard someone say a few years ago, they were talking about a conversation.
This was a consultant. They're talking about a conversation they're having with one of their clients. And this client wanted to go pick up their kids from school every day. They would leave the office to go get, pick up their kids and all they were doing was taking their kids and driving them to the kind of like the after school care center.
So it wasn't like they were taking off for the rest of the day. It was just a 30 minute block that they really prioritize spending with their kids to talk to them and everything to be like, okay, now you're going to go spend a little time here. And then I'll see you for dinner. And they're like, but what do [00:40:00] I tell my clients of why I'm not available at three o'clock every day.
And the consultant goes. Nobody has to know why you're not available. You're just not available. And I was just like, oh my gosh, that is such a powerful thing. Cause especially as a woman, we wanted to explain things. I'm not available because of this. I'm not available because of this. It's like, well, what are people going to think of me?
Cause I'm not available. Cause I want to spend time with my kids. And it's like, They don't need to know that. My schedule's blocked off on Thursday. My schedule's blocked off on Thursday. I'm busy all day. I can't meet with you unless it's an emergency. You don't need to know, am I meeting with a client all day, or is it the middle of summer and I'm taking my kids to an amusement park?
Like, you don't need to know where I am, just that I'm not available for you that day, but here's when I am available to meet with you.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: I love that. That's very empowering too.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: Yes, it is.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: Girl, I could, I could carry this conversation on for another hour. I love, love, love it. And I know that our audiences loved everything that you've shared. So can you tell [00:41:00] them how and where they can connect with you?
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: Yes, so the name of my business is Growing Your Team and you can head on over to growingyourteam. com to check out all the services that we offer. We have the Growing Your Team podcast that you can get through through the website or it's available on pretty much all major podcasting platforms. And we are, we spend a lot of our time on Instagram.
At growing your team. And if you want to schedule a call to talk about how we can help you and support you in your business with your hiring needs, you can go to growing your team. com slash jumpstart with jumpstart being all one word and schedule a time for us to talk.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: I love that. I will make sure that all of that is in the show notes. So if anybody's driving or walking their dog or something like that, , they can reference back to it. And y'all, if you want a business bestie. Sending business tips, encouraging words, and event updates directly to your fingertips.
You can text the word BESTIE to 855 784 8299 [00:42:00] and you'll hear from me on the regular without spam. So again, that number is 855 784 8299. Also in the show notes. And Jamie, thanks again for being here. It's been a pleasure.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate2: Thank you so much for having me.
GMT20231120-175549_Recording_separate1: Absolutely. Y'all choose to be great today and every day. We'll see you next time.
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